Internal Components of a computer

Components
Graphics card This used to make visuals images that can be
(or video card) displayed on a monitor
Sound Hardware used to drive (send sound signals
to) speakers is usually built into a
motherboard.
Heat dispersal The fan and heat sink are needed by the CPU
and other hot parts of the computer so they
don’t burn out.
Storage devices A solid state or magnetic drive is needed to
keep programs and documents when the
computer is switched off. You will need a
large storage device if you want to keep
large files such as videos.
Optical drive An optical drive uses laser light to read data
from CDs and DVD. The optical drive is used
to install new software and to make
backups.

Processing Digital Data

Storage

Input Output
Device RAM Device

ALU

Register

Control Unit

CPU
The storage device is also used for documents - these are copied into RAM when opened or
to storage when saved.

The CPU and graphical processing unit (GPU) (which processes visual images) have a massive
effect on a computer’s performance. These run all the instructions and complete the
calculations.

The speed at which instructions and calculations with the CPU and GPU occur and the
synchronisation of all the components are regulated by a clock. A microprocessor requires a
fixed number of clock cycles to execute each instruction. The clock speed is typically
measured in either megahertz (MHz) or gigahertz (GHz). In general, the faster the clock
speed, the more instructions the processor can execute per second and the higher the
performance of the computer.

Processors often have multiple processing cores. Each core is able to run code
independently, so more cores mean that more code is being processed at the same time.
Therefore, programs run faster and the user experience is improved.

Cache memory

Cache memory is used between faster and slower devices to let them work more quickly
together. The fast device writes or reads to/from the cache memory and the slower devices
updates as quickly as it can. For example, the processor has cache memory to speed up
access to the RAM, which means that the processor isn’t idle while it waits for RAM to
respond to an instruction. Also, slower hard disks have a cache memory to speed up disk
access between the RAM and the hard disk.

Powerful microprocessors generate lots of heat. Without a heat sink and fan heat dispersal
system to cool them down they would quickly burn out.

Data buses

A data bus is simply a circuit that connects one part of the motherboard to another. The
more data a bus can handle at one time (capacity)